itunes media folder

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Wirelessone Author

Level 1

4 points

itunes media folder

This is very probably an old question I am re-asking, but why is my iTunes Media folder duplicating songs?

In many folders there are two sets of songs.

In list view, the first set states "Date Modified" and gives a date (usually 13 March 2015)

The second set states "Date Modified" and gives different date (in most cases 27 Jan 2022"

The later set of titles has a "1" in the filename, e.g. "Circus Games 1" whereas the earlier version has just "Circus Games"

These are obviously taking up a lot of space (the entire folder is 600GB)

There is however only one set of songs in the iTunes app.

What on earth is happening?

Is it something to do with TImeMachine?

I'm running High Sierra Version 10.13.6 by the way.

Thanks in advance

iMac 27″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Feb 19, 2022 6:17 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,516 points

Feb 20, 2022 8:41 AM in response to Wirelessone

The most likely reason is that at some point you had an issue where the iTunes library was reset, losing track of locally stored files, but showing your purchases or your iCloud Music Library in the cloud. You would then have downloaded the cloud content, which would have generated the files with the trailing 1s because the intended filenames were already in use.

See Duplicate songs in iTunes - Apple Community. Use File > Add to Library to import your iTunes Media folder. Use the Songs view sorted on Date Added and set the view to Same Album/Exact duplicates. Select the newly imported duplicates and delete them, sending the deleted files to trash. Use iTunes > Preferences > Advanced to turn Keep organized off and then back on again. You should now find that folders only have one copy of each track, without a tailing 1.

tt2

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Answer 2

Wirelessone Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 11, 2022 11:45 PM in response to Wirelessone

Hi

Sorry, completely forgot to reply!

I followed your instructions and it did the trick, so thanks.

On the downside, for some reason the iTunes Media folder wasn't deleting songs I'd deleted years ago and they were still in there, and now all this stuff I thought I'd gotten rid of forever have been imported back into iTunes, so I'm getting rid of them again! It's also re-imported the low quality artwork I'd replaced and re-inserted I-Tunes' dodgy genre labelling (Sex Pistols are Indie Rock apparently).

Oh, well!

Thanks for the tip - it solved the original problem anyway!

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